The Necromancers eBook

The clergyman too had seemed affected. He had
watched, with turned-back head, the phenomenon from
beginning to end, and at the close, with a long indrawing
of breath, had looked once at Laurie, licked his dry
lips with a motion that was audible in that profound
silence, and once more dropped his eyes. The ladies
had been silent, and all but motionless throughout.

Well, the rest had happened comparatively quickly.

Once more, after the lapse of a few minutes, the radiance
had begun to reform; but this time it had emerged
almost immediately, diffused and misty like a nebula;
had hung again before the cabinet, and then, with
a strange, gently whirling motion, had seemed to arrange
itself in lines and curves.

Gradually, as he stared at it, it had begun to take
the shape and semblance of a head, swathed in drapery,
with that same drapery, hanging, as it appeared in
folds, dripping downwards to the ground, where it
lost itself in vagueness. Then, as he still stared,
conscious of nothing but the amazing fact, features
appeared to be forming—­first blots and
lines as of shadow, finally eyes, nose, mouth, and
chin as of a young girl....

A moment later there was no longer a doubt. It
was the face of Amy Nugent that was looking at him,
grave and steady—­as when he had seen it
in the moonlight above the sluice—­and behind,
seen half through the strange drapery, and half apart
from it, a couple of feet behind, the face of the
sleeping medium.

At that sight he had not moved nor spoken, it was
enough that the fact was there. Every power he
possessed was concentrated in the one effort of observation....

He heard from somewhere a gasping sigh, and there
rose up between him and the face the figure of the
clergyman, with his head turned back staring at the
apparition, and one hand only on the table, yet with
that hand so heavy upon it that the whole table shuddered
with his shudder.

There was a movement on the left, and he heard a fierce
feminine whisper—­

“Sit down, sir; sit down this instant....”

When the clergyman had again sunk down into his seat
with that same strong shudder, the luminous face was
already incoherent; the features had relapsed again
into blots and shadows, the drapery was absorbing
itself upwards into the center from which it came.
Once more the nebula trembled, moved backwards, and
disappeared. The next instant the radiance went
out, as if turned off by a switch. The medium
groaned gently and awoke.

Well, that had ended it. Laurie scarcely remembered
the talking that followed, the explanations, the apologies,
the hardly concealed terror of the young clergyman.
The medium had come out presently, dazed and confused.
They had talked ... and so forth. Then Laurie
had come home, still trying to assimilate the amazing
fact, of which he said that it could make no difference—­that
he had seen with his own eyes the face of Amy Nugent
four months after her death.